MCDONALD’S has binned a bizarre AI Christmas advert after it triggered a storm of ridicule online.
Viewers bashed the holiday commercial, branding it “creepy” and “soulless”.
The 45-second clip was part of the fast food giant’s Netherlands campaign, and featured a jumble of frantic scenes flashing by every few seconds.
The lyrics of ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ were swapped for “it’s the most terrible time of the year” while AI-made families stumbled through a series of weird accidents.
The ad sparked such a backlash that McDonald’s removed the comments section before pulling the ad entirely.
One X user fumed: “The song is poorly written, almost certainly written by AI because it doesn’t fit the original rhythm at all, and at the end it just makes up a passage.”
They added that the visuals were “pointless” since it was just “random nonsense like most AI videos.”
Another blast followed: “It’s hard to recall a more soulless and ingenuine piece of work than this.”
The doomed ad was commissioned by TBWA and churned out by The Gardening Club, the AI branch of film studio The Sweetshop.
A page celebrating The Gardening Club’s “AI Christmas magic” has now mysteriously vanished from The Sweetshop website.
Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweetshop, rushed to defend the project online.
She insisted critics had no idea how “the hours that went into this job far exceeded” a normal shoot.
Bridge wrote on LinkedIn: “Blood, sweat, tears, and an honestly ridiculous amount of coaxing to get the models to behave and to honour the creative brief shot by shot.”
In response, another critic of the ad wrote: “The people who made the AI McDonald’s ad want you to know they put more man hours into it than a traditional production.
“In their attempt to prove they worked hard, they’ve instead shown AI is hard to control, still expensive, and uglier.
“What’s the point again?”
Another added: “Notice that people who were making commercials before AI never came on social media self-aggrandising about not sleeping for weeks?
“Mainly because it was not a common occurrence at all and anyone who says they had to do that for something like this is probably lying”
The studio claimed it spent seven weeks crafting the campaign and “refining every single frame”.
Some scenes reportedly had more than ten specialists working to make a “film that feels real” despite it being entirely artificial.
“The man–hours poured into this film were more than a traditional production,” the studio posted.
The team boasted about “selecting and shaping each AI performer” and fine-tuning their looks, energy and “emotional presence.”
Bridge insisted: “It was craft. Just using different tools.”
A “countless amount of takes” were apparently needed before the final product emerged, but critics were not impressed.
One customer snapped: “Won’t be eating any more McRibs until you apologise, McDonalds.
“Of all people you have the money to pay for human actors, who need to eat.”
Even the ad’s gloomy Christmas tone rubbed viewers the wrong way.
A user slammed it as a “massive fail” for its bleak messaging.
He wrote: “I hate it because it diminishes a beautiful, holy, sacred moment in time to burnt cookies, decorating mishaps, and annoying relatives.
Last month, Coca-Cola was inundated with rage-fuelled customers as it used AI to remake its much-loved Christmas advert for the second year in a row.
Viewers blasted the advert online with hundreds taking to the comments of its debut on YouTube.
The beverage giant claims these adverts “push the boundaries of technical precision, cinematic storytelling and production quality.”